"The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the confidential process, quoted Biden as saying of the decision: 'I’m looking for someone who can do the job, not someone who wants the other job.'"

Google is messing with its Blogger posting engine. It was awkward, but ways to work around the awkwardness were found and used. This new edition is DREADFUL. The hope is to learn to work around it too, but if this and later posts do not turn out correctly, or are too much trouble to write, the blog may simply be shut down. Leaving well enough alone is not a part of the Google worldview.

Now, to the substance of the post:

The headline is a quote from this LA Times item which highlights Karen Bass as a possible Biden VP choice. Bass would be an excellent choice, one which could lessen dissatisfaction among progressives with the Dem Party's machinations, thus far.  The Hill published an item mentioning Barbara Lee as another excellent progressive possibility (both are multi-term California House members who would balance the ticket philosophically and geographically). From The Hill:

Nina Turner, a former top aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) presidential bid, said Thursday that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden is not truly seeking a progressive to be his running mate.

Turner, also a former state senator in Ohio, pointed to Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) as a potential progressive the Biden campaign could look to for a vice presidential pick, though no chatter has surfaced that Lee is in contention.

“If you are a progressive, you need not apply, that’s just the bottom line here. And no one should be surprised by this, certainly Vice President Joe Biden has the right to pick whomever he decides to. However, there is a component within the mainstream Democratic Party that has a disdain for progressives. So that is why the congresswoman is not on that list,” Turner said on Hill.TV’s “Rising.”

Turner noted that the Biden campaign is under pressure to pick a woman of color as its running mate in light of recent protests over systemic racism and police brutality, but that his running mate should be a progressive and not just check a box.

[italics added] Having made the reluctant Crabgrass choice to endorse Biden, Bernie's recent interview with The New Yorker eases my mind, in part, while still skeptical that Biden will make a counterproductive VP choice [names mentioned, check the box Harris or check the box Demings].

From the interview, Bernie responding:

I think one of the myths that is being exploited right now is that I hear my Republican colleagues talk about, Well, you know, yes, this pandemic has been devastating, but, a few months ago, we had this great economy. This really great economy. I don’t know how you have this “great economy” when half of your people are living paycheck to paycheck. And what we are seeing right now, the great economic message of today, is that, when you live paycheck to paycheck and you miss a few paychecks, a few weeks of work, your family is suddenly now in economic desperation. Literally. Struggling to put food on the table and pay the rent.

So we’ve got to rethink. If there is anything that I hope we achieve in the midst of this unprecedented moment in American history, it’s that we use this moment to rethink, as I have said before, some of the basic tenets and institutions of American society, and learn from this pandemic and economic collapse so that we move this country in a very, very different direction.

[...] It is very easy for somebody to stand up and say, truthfully, “I disagree with what Joe Biden stands for, his politics are much too conservative.” I get that. I share that view. But not to understand what it would mean to this country, and to our children and to our grandchildren—I have seven grandchildren—and what it will mean to this planet in terms of climate change if Trump is reëlected is, to me, to miss the most important point that has to be made. Trump cannot be reëlected. And what we have got to do, if you are unhappy with Biden’s politics, if you disagree with Biden’s politics—and I certainly do—then the fight has got to take place, starting today, to make sure that he moves in as progressive a way as possible, that his Administration is as progressive as possible.

That’s what our task is. It is not to allow Donald Trump to be reëlected and to see the destruction of American democracy and the destruction of this planet.

[...] I did everything that I could in 2016 to move the Democratic Party in a more progressive way and to see that Hillary Clinton was elected. I worked very, very hard in trying to do that, so I reject any argument that I did not try to elect Hillary Clinton. I did. I think the difference now is that, between you and me, I have a better relationship with Joe Biden than I had with Hillary Clinton, and that Biden has been much more receptive to sitting down and talking with me and other progressives than we have seen in the past.

In 2016, in fact, we sat down with Hillary Clinton’s people, and we hammered out what turned out to be the most progressive Democratic platform in the history of the country. But I think it is fair to say that our relationship with Biden is a stronger relationship. I’ve known Biden for the last fourteen years, more or less, since I’ve been in the Senate, and worked with him a little bit when he was Vice-President. I think what you’re going to see is a closer relationship.

[...] I don’t want to sugarcoat this. He [Biden] has been open and personable and friendly, but his views and my views are very different, in some areas more than others. I think you’re going to see him being rather strong on the need for a new economy in America that does a lot better job in representing working families than we currently have. He has told me that he wants to be as strong as possible in terms of climate change, and I look forward to hearing his proposals. There are six task forces at work, literally, as we speak, between his people and people who supported me, hammering out, or trying to hammer out, agreements on the economy, health care, immigration reform, criminal-justice reform, education, and climate change, and we’ll see what the fruits of those discussions are. But Joe has been open to having his people sit down with some of the most progressive folks in America, and that’s a good sign.

[...] I have been speaking out, and we will continue to speak out. Look, I think everybody knows that the police murder of George Floyd is part of a very, very long pattern, and, because of groups like Black Lives Matter and the A.C.L.U. and others, we have been discussing those murders a lot more in recent years than we have in the past, when it was really quite common practice. So this has gone on for decades, and I think the major transformation that’s coming now is a result of cell phones and video cameras. People are seeing what’s actually happening, which was not the case decades ago. But this has gone on, and it’s got to end. It has absolutely got to end. Last week, I sent a letter to Chuck Schumer with a rather detailed set of proposals which I think are very bold in terms of police-department reform on top of over-all criminal-justice reform.

[...] In fact, something like two out of three younger people, under thirty, when they vote, are going to vote against the Republican Party. That’s what Trump and his Republican friends understand, and that’s why they engage in voter suppression in general, making it harder, and why they fear very much the idea that everybody in America should receive a paper ballot.

Our job, by the way, as part of any new emergency legislation, is to do everything we can to make sure that states do have the funding to provide paper ballots to every resident, every eligible voter in their state.

[...] Our campaign, in an unprecedented way in modern American history—maybe going back to Eugene Debs, in 1912, or whatever—we took on the entire establishment. It wasn’t that we were just fighting for Medicare for All—we were taking on the health-care industry. Not just fighting to lower prescription-drug costs—taking on the greed and collusion and price fixing of the pharmaceutical industry. Not just fighting for environmental protection, we were taking on the whole fossil-fuel industry. Not just taking on the greed of Wall Street, but we were talking about breaking up the major financial institutions in this country. So, in other words, what made our campaign unique is we took on the entire establishment, and, obviously, corporate media is part of that establishment.

So you can’t ask, Well, if the corporate media acted differently? They’re not going to act differently. They are the establishment. They are owned by the establishment. Just as one example, one tiny example: at a time when we are the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all people as a human right, when we pay twice as much per capita as do people of other countries, and in many cases have worse outcomes,how many television programs have you seen, Andrew, that talk about Medicare for All and the contrast between our profit-driven, private-insurance-dominated health-care system and other systems? Have you seen one program on that?

[...] How many programs have we seen about income and wealth inequality and the morality of three people owning more wealth than the bottom half of American society? You don’t see it. So it’s not what they did to my campaign. Of course, I knew that that was going to happen. They came up with every line that they could. One of them was, Bernie can’t beat Trump, which, I thought then, and I think now, we were probably in the strongest position to beat Trump. Or, Bernie’s this, or Bernie’s that, or whatever—“Bernie bros”—whatever the line was. Nothing surprised me. We knew that that would happen. We knew that our Medicare for All proposal would be opposed by the health-care industry, and they and others spent millions of dollars in super-pacs lying about what I’m trying to do. Did that surprise me? No. Did the role of MSNBC or the media in general surprise me? No, it didn’t. That is the establishment that we have taken on, and that is why we have worked so hard to try to build an alternative media. I’m proud of the fact that we have a lot more viewers and followers on social media and live streams than many other Democrats do. But we worked hard at that, and we do that because I believe strongly that we need an alternative vehicle, an alternative media, to talk about the ideas that impact working society, because it’s very naïve to believe that the corporate media will do that.

[...] I am disappointed, obviously, that I didn’t win, and that our movement didn’t win, because I think this is a moment in history where we need transformative change in this country. So there’s nobody out there, obviously, more disappointed than I am. And I know millions of others feel the same way. But what I want people to understand is we have advanced the agenda an enormous way forward, that the campaign that we ran, as I mentioned to you a moment ago, was not, just, Oh, I want better health care and I want to improve the Affordable Care Act, or I want to build more solar panels. What our campaign was about was taking on the entire establishment, including the corporate media, including Wall Street, and the drug companies, and the insurance companies, and the military-industrial complex, and the prison-industrial complex, and the fossil-fuel industry, and the whole bunch. We took them on. And what we showed is that the American people, in fact, are prepared not just for incremental change. They want to move this country forward in a very transformative way. And what you’re seeing on the streets of America today—beautiful young people, and others, of all races, all backgrounds, standing up in the fight for justice—I believe you’re going to see that spreading. Not only for racial justice and police-department reform. You’re going to see it for economic justice and the ending of starvation wages in America. You’re going to see it for health-care justice and the understanding that health care is a human right, not a privilege. You’re going to see it in terms of climate justice and the understanding that we cannot allow this planet to be destroyed by the fossil-fuel industry.

We planted very powerful seeds, and those seeds are going to grow, and you’re seeing them out on the streets of America today. So I say to people who have been supportive of my campaigns that the fight has just begun, and, as I mentioned when I suspended the campaign, the campaign ends, but the struggle continues. And anybody who knows anything about history—whether it’s workers’ rights, whether it’s civil rights, whether it’s women’s rights, whether it’s gay rights, whether it’s environmental rights—understands that change does not happen overnight. It really does not. It changes when political consciousness changes; it changes when millions of people get involved in the process and take to the streets. That’s how change takes place. And we are in the moment when I believe that in fact is going to happen.

[...] I know that the media and everybody else, our opponents, try to frighten people with the words “democratic socialism.” But, when you break it down to what we are fighting for, it turns out that a lot of what we’re fighting for already exists in other countries on earth. Is health care a human right, not an employee benefit—do you think that’s a radical idea? Making sure that every job in America pays people a decent wage, making sure that all of our kids have decent education. Are these radical ideas? They’re not radical ideas. Believe me, they’re not. Saving the planet? I don’t think that’s a very radical idea. So I think, when I talked about winning the ideological struggle—we have. But that is especially true among the younger people who are the future of America.

For whatever reason, maybe we could’ve done better, we did terribly with older people. Biden just mopped us up with older people. On the other hand, even in states where we did poorly, and lost, we won a majority of young people, forty or younger. That’s the future of America.

So Bernie continues the efforts. In doing so, he believes Biden shows some promise. The Biden people are more receptive to discussing decency than the Clinton people were. This is all cause to think positively. A sound VP choice beyond "checking the box" would cement the belief that a Joe Biden presidency would not be the nightmare it could be.

As noted at the outset, Biden could choose Barbara Lee or Karen Bass as a show of good faith toward the progressive bloc of the Democratic Party and toward the disenchanted young, who are the future of the nation. Biden does appear more capable of grasping other ideas and less self-centered and close-minded than the Clintons. He has his allies and donors, but he could grow in office in ways we'd hoped Obama would have but did not.

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Well, it worked. Not the first time and not without a glitch or two. Posting with the new interface will not be enough a burden to satisfy those who'd rejoice if I shut the blog down.